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The Face of Oblivion (universe)
Warning: While the possibility may vary, the content on this page may become the seed of a great story that people might not want spoiled. While I the future (depending on whether I want to go through this or not) author of this maybe-story, DanChan123, doesn't really care much about that right now, read at your risk. I am mainly looking for constructive advice to help make my epic story idea better. A lot of this is up to huge changes, so there is a chance some of the information you gather won't be a spoiler to the final product, if it will exist. Also there may be controversial topics that may arise (for example the story is coated with heavy criticism against secular humanism) and I don't really want to discuss them at the risk of flame wars. Introduction TFO is an abbreviation for the current (and awkward) title of the story idea, "The Face of Oblivion". As you will see soon, the tree I expect to grow from this seed page is HUGE. The Face of Oblivion is a sci-fi epic with a lot of deeper meanings that I'm still struggling to put together into an amazing story. Here's the "basic" summary WITHOUT the possible spoilers: In the distant future (a typical cyberpunk sci-fi Solar System dominated by humanity), Lovecraftian alien invaders with much technology themselves arrive in the Solar System, and attack humanity with a deep hatred for them. Hint, hint, these alien invaders act as if they've known of the humans before, and they speak an evolved form of the English language, despite that humanity claims to have never encountered any extraterrestrials. Like humans these aliens breathe oxygen and are carbon-based, but what sets them apart from humans greatly is that they contain an "organ" with purposes no human or other organism living in the Solar System has. Within each living alien is a singularity (of physics) that spits out and sucks in an energy source that is converted into material energy as the energy passes out of the singularity. When an alien dies, the singularity disappears and the energy fades. This "organ" is called a "spirit" and it is suggested to be present within the mind of the alien. The evidence for this is that even though the singularity cannot be seen, the material energy is still detected within each alien and scientists cannot find the origin of this energy other than something from the alien's conscience. These aliens engage in a deadly war, conquering all of the Solar System until Earth. However, upon reaching Earth, necessary resources the aliens need to continue the war have been greatly depleted, forcing a stalemate between the weakened remaining human population on Earth and the aliens, who are nicknamed "Demons" as informal jargon among lasting humans. As a compromise to revive the human population in a safe environment, the United Nations write the "Sanctuary Articles", which was the plan to relocate humanity into various designated safe zones scattered across the planet. These refuges would cover large spands of land defended by walls and defense technologies available at the time. These safe zones, the largest known as Eden (a bit larger than New York City just for you to get the idea), are known as Sanctuaries, each one containing populations of hundred millions of people fit for a thriving society led by an authoritarian government and supplied by enormous megacorporations that makes up the majority of the economy. These megacorporations make up the backbone of society by providing all materials and nearly all types of common jobs for civilians, as well as for the development of life in Sanctuaries. However, after several centuries of Sanctuary life, many problems arose in the Sanctuary societies. Even after the Sanctuary articles became a basis of all post-war life, many disagreed about how humanity should recover. During this time scientists finally mastered universal genetic engineering after centuries upon centuries of successes and fails, and some pushed to use it on humans for the benefit of humanity, while others did not. Conflict arose when a strict humanist doctrine was placed over all Sanctuary governments. The new government wanted to eliminate genetic defects from the human population and tinker with the genetics of new and "genetically healthier/superior" generations of humans. However, this plan also denied human equality and human rights. Thus began an event known as the Purge, where the government forcefully banned intercourse among civilians considered "genetically inferior" (containing harmful genes that may impair the physical states of future offspring). The governments wanted to breed healthier, less inferior generations of humans through artificial selection. However due to illegal intercourse taking place among these "genetically inferior" civilians, government forces began to concentrate these people, some governments performing forced sterilizations and other extremist measures. Often targetted during the Purge, innocent or not, were the large, lower income populations. They argued that the higher class were treating them like animals and the Sanctuary like a zoo, and wanted that to stop. There was major public debate about this, but the lower class rarely had a voice because only the wealthier high class could afford a formal political education that gave them a political voice. At the same time, troubles increased between socio-economical classes. Due to the reliance on a megacorporate economy, leaders in the corporate field earned huge sums of money and became very wealthy, while those civilians with poorer skills hit the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy. Wealthy people could afford performing high profile genetic re-engineering on their offspring to prevent them being subject to the Purge, while lower class civilians could not. Eventually this lead to civil war between three groups: Conformists wanted to keep these ways, Reformists wanted to simply abolish these new ways, and Equalists wanted a revolution that made all humans equal under a strict "equal benefits for all" policy. Equalists successfully took over several Sanctuaries but those were mainly unstable, and later on those Sanctuaries collapsed to either attacks from Demons or civil wars. However the majority of Sanctuaries held a political battlefield between Reformists and Conformists. The conflict was resolved the worst way, with all "genetically inferior" humans banished from all Sanctuaries as "Nomads", due to the nomadic lifestyle they must adopt for any chance of survival out in a dangerous and wild land. While the Purge claimed to have ended due to "economic complications", according to Sanctuary governments, banishments did continue, although these were often re-dubbed "criminal banishments". Reformist and Conformist parties began to tackle other issues with the purges considered uncontroversial. The story starts centuries after these events. The beginning of the story incorporates several long one-shots introducing important characters and their situations, which later lead up to a point of which all these characters are joined along with other minor characters, into the main story. The (Possible) Spoilers You have been warned. To explain how everything really started, we'll have to jump back to the very beginning. In this future time humanity is very technologically advanced and traditions of the past are almost extinct, for instance religion, faith, etc. The idea of God is a fantastical one with very little importance. Mankind has declared themself kings of nature, which has brought much conflict due to ethical relativism between different political states of humanity. Also Earth's resources have become limited and nations fight over claims to resources found in the rest of the Solar System. Amidst this, researchers in a space station orbitting Pluto have discovered a wormhole that can be a gate to another galaxy. Governments hope to see if they can reach the other galaxy through the wormhole and access all sorts of resources in an alien universe. Research Astronauts successfully travel through the wormhole, but the presence of the extra mass within the wormhole's singularity destabilizes the wormhole, trapping the astronauts in an alien universe where the clock runs much faster relative to the Solar System (this has to do with the rotation speed of the star system around it's Sun). The astronauts, numbering in the hundreds (a large team is needed for a greater chance of success of course) arrive on the Demon extraterrestrial homeworld, and are surprised to find its conditions just like Earth's, where Demons are living in a primitive, Garden-of-Eden society. The Demons have a great connection to something of great power that keeps them in such a peaceful state, and allows them to be immortal; that power is unknown to the human astronauts because they do not have what is a "spirit". However upon interaction with the astronauts, the Demons begin to fall and worship the human astronauts, and they begin to feed their material energy originated from the spirit, to the humans. As a result the humans develop a "spirit" but due to their nature, are unable to feel the connection the Demons once did and they can only use the energy to perform "physical miracles", or magic, by applying, regulating, and subtracting energy in anything at their own will. The Demons create a religion around the humans and learn the English language as the "language of the gods" (of course they have a freakish accent that goes along with it) The humans, composed primarily of intellectuals of course, helped the Demons develop new technologies that human society had already invented. The Demons worship empowers them with energy that keeps the humans immortal as long as they are worshipped and continually fed the energy. The humans eventually gain so much of this energy that they are able to live without their bodies, and instead exist in spirit energy form, and be able to manifest themselves in the spirits of the sentient and living. This allows them to "possess" Demon subjects like their avatars. Seeing that they probably will not have a chance to return to human society and that they have so much control over the Demons, the humans cast down their mortal states and manifest themselves in the souls of the Demons. Ina nutshell, over the milleniums these humans have literally "evolved" into "non-material gods". Over many centuries, however, the Demons begin to think harder about society and conflicts emerge as a challenge to traditional religion and spirituality. To describe this simply, they are a reflection of human society over time as we see from history. The Demons begin to rely less on the humans as their gods, and because of the decreased worship, the power of the gods is decreased. With the reduction in control over Demon society the human's use more tyrannical means to call Demons back to worship. This behavior causes the Demons to rebel against their gods. Fearing that the spirit power of the "gods" would be abused against them, a civil war erupted between secular and religiously loyal Demons. The war is devastating. The gods eventually decide to abandon their hosts, and go into exile (hiding in the souls of the lesser known). Over time Demon society begins to carve a religion out of these events. Their beliefs include that the gods will return again to punish them again when they are in disorder. This belief is an incentive for the Demons to attempt to keep order, but as a reflection of human society, this is very difficult. Like the humans did, the spirit organ within the Demons disappears. Like humanity, the Demons' race for necessary natural resources brings them to discover the same wormhole that brought the humans to their world, which has restabilized over the centuries. Since time runs much slower in the Solar System than in the Demons' world, when the Demon's arrive in the Solar System through the wormhole, only a few centuries have gone by in contrast to the multi-milleniums of the Demon world. The gods stowaway on board the Demon fleet to arrive in the world of their origin. During this age the United Nations have increased power and resources are distributed between nations based on open necessity. The megacorporations that mine the Asteroid Belt (precursors to the Sanctuary megacorporations), other planets, and extraplanetary moons for resources are abundant with wealth. The United Nations have established a full military alliance as well, making them a formidable opponent for the Demons, who are more of an alliance between Twelve Tribes of Demon sub-species (will be explained later). Upon encountering humans for the first time, the Demons reconcile with their old beliefs affirming a truth and a revelation that has proven the gods a fallacy. The Demons, knowing that their gods originate from an alien society similar to theirs, are bewildered that they have believed incorrectly for so long. Feeling cheated, the Demons place their anger on humanity, and are determined to conquer the Solar System and enslave humans as gods themselves. This is a symbolic reflection of misotheistic atheists, where an atheist may feel hatred toward a supernatural being that he/she claims does not exist (which is illogical of course). Humans, on the other hand, are surprised not only that they had encountered a technologically advanced extraterrestrial race, but that the Demons speak crude English as well. You've read the rest of the happenings. Meanwhile, the former gods have made human soldiers their avatars, technically applying them with the singularity and the energy. However, other humans are unable to communicate with the "gods" due to not having the spirit organ, and the gods were not as powerful as before such that they could completely control their hosts (take over the mind and such). Those who are possessed by Demons will eventually by known as the Spirit Walkers (by Nomads, which will be explained later). Spirit Walkers can convert the spirit energy from the gods within them for their own use, if they understand how to do so. The gods are still empowered by the misotheism of the Demons, however. In other words, the more hatred for the gods is shown by the Demons, the more energy the god and his avatar gains. This makes Spirit Walkers particularly dangerous to Demons because their presence at local proximity makes one stronger. On the other hand, the energy from hatred can have negative effects on the mind. Also, gods can die after running out of energy, especially during a fight where the energy is used. The rise of Nomad culture was a huge step in progress that allowed for greater connection between humans and gods because the gods could use their powers to appeal to the Nomads who will do anything to seek satisfaction. Over the centuries the Nomads began to develop a sense of spirituality with the gods and Spirit Walkers are discovered among the Nomad population. Even More Origins A higher, omniscient being first created the physical worlds of each group and both the Humans and Demons seperately in each world. Each world, or physical nature, was created by the supreme being to be a visual aspect of Human/Demon nature. The purpose was that Humans/Demons would look at nature and see the visual effect of their problems and learn from their mistakes. Of course to think of these things, Humans/Demons were given a conscious. Humans/Demons were given a "spirit organ" (mentioned earlier) that powered their conscious using a transphysical energy (changing from metaphysical to physical) that originates from God; the spiritual conscious gave them the ability to percieve the supreme being, God, and both inner nature and physical nature. The spirit energy can also be converted to transphysical energy (the way God interacted with people in the physical world via miracles), and this transphysical energy could be shared with other Humans/Demons as seen from the Demon worship of the human astronauts. The human astronauts were eventually able to take a form a pure energy because they had enough energy to allow their conscious to percieve the world in the way one could associate with the brain, without a physical body. The metaphysical "spirit" energy also kept both inner and physical nature in balance. However the Humans/Demons were distracted by the physical world and forgot that both their own nature and physical nature were both consubstantious: once Human/Demon desire was placed over God's desire in any incident, the mutual recognition between the authority of God and objective position of Human/Demon society relative to the actions of God is broken, and both Human/Demon nature/conscious and physical nature falls apart. This bond of devoted belief allows the energy to be shared between individuals (although God, unlike mutually physical bond of spirits such as Demon worship of the astronauts, will never run out of that energy). God did have the power to fix things back together but he knew it would require destroying the Humans/Demons he created. Seeing their physical capabilities, the Human/Demons saw inner nature/conscious and physical nature as parallel/mutually exclusive: this created the mental illusion that Humans/Demons could defy the desire of God. In the end, the result was that nature began to detoriate and fall into disorder. Some Humans/Demons blamed this on God, while others blamed this on those who blamed God. Conflicts arose and God was also blamed for conflicts. Nature nonetheless continued to detoriate due to the corruption of humanity. Technological advances created an illusion of a bright future where humans could become kings of nature and fix their own worldly problems without the need of a God's power and the sacrifice of humanly desire. This belief was the foundation of what Humans called secular humanism. In this time the spirit organ was completely lost by the Humans. In relative time, Demon society followed the example of secular humanism right as both worlds began to clash. Now skip to the conclusive side of the whole story. The heroes discover a permanent source of spiritual energy that they can use to combat the Demons: God, (the term "god" is not mentioned so he is portrayed indirectly through suggestion). Ever since (some) of the characters gained Spirit Walker abilities they were able to harness the spiritual energy as physical power with their conscious, but their power was limited since only God is the infinite source. As the only beings out of all Humans + Demons with a functioning spirit organ God was able to use miracles and dreams to communicate with both the "gods" and the Spirit Walkers that hosted them. These Spirit Walkers, with the wisdom of the "gods", interpret God's message correctly and decide that the only way to save humanity is to reject their worldy desires in favor of Godly ones. They begin to see physical nature as a fabric of the "Total Mind of Humanity", and so when God calls upon them to perform a certain action with an effect that may be considered impossible according to naturalistic belief (in effect, a miracle), the miracle would occur nonetheless (you might ask that God could have done it without the need of the hero's commitment, but the hero's commitment was purposeful; the goal is for humanity to make sense of things, not achieve the conclusion without any explanation for how it was reached). Prophetically, God reveals his purpose that the Demons were created to be used as a mirror reflection of Human society so that Humanity could look itself in the mirror even on the battlefield. At the same time Humanity was created so demons could learn the same leasson. In the end, the Humans reveal to the Demons the power of true connection with God and the onslaught ends with both sides returning to peace. The aftermath is left unclear. The Principle of TFO For Dummies To understand what was just explained, one must understand that in this universe, there are two different dimensions made clear. Both the Solar System and the Demon's Star system are both located in space and in the same dimension. Meanwhile there is another dimension that transcends these two star systems. This dimension will be referred to as the Spirit Realm. The place where our dimension and the Spirit Realm meet is within the conscience found in an individual that is conscious, not just including humans or Demons but also in all living things, anything that can naturally process information. Spiritual energy is both released out or pulled back from the conscience and is in correlation to the materialistically observable information-processing activity within every organism, for instance brain activity. In this fictional universe, the "Creator, First Conscience, God" (I'll call it God for now) created all organic life with this spiritual energy present. God also created both humans and Demons (these are the only "sentient" beings mentioned in the story so it can be assumed that humans and Demons were the only such special creations) as the very representations of what is "knowledge of God". To make an analogy, both humans and Demons were specially created to process more information than other organic life, including a special method that involves the brain, extra senses (sight, smell, etc); pretty much every way one could say a man is more intelligent and analytical than a flower (in man's own special way). This set of abilities the humans and demons have in common which other organic life do not have are part of the soul and its connection to the physical body. When humankind and Demonkind first appeared into the world, they had a "sixth sense" of a sort which allowed them to sense spiritual energy in a way you and I would describe now as material. To help you understand, this is like being able to physically see, smell, taste happiness, distress, or other emotions in another person or a puppy. Another major sense was that they were so high up on the spectrum of "perspective/sensitivity", these primary humans/Demons could physically see God in their own way. God could also see things in their way, but God had the most senses not mentioned because he is transcendant to all. In a nutshell for basic points, what God could do that even those early humans could not was the ability to see the future, past, and present in a single plane, the ability to be omnipresent, and the ability to omniscient. We'll call this reality, the Pre-World, which is the world before the two mentioned dimensions became distinct. In the Pre-World, these extra senses the first humans/Demons had allowed them to see pretty much everything that can be known about the affect of an action. The basic purpose of humans/Demons having these abilities (having a soul) was to willfully know God, who had originally created most generally for his pleasure and glory. And with accordance to his foresight or vision, both Man and Demon rebelled against God when God chose not to give them what they had begun to desire: godly status, omniscience, etc, (an impossible act because God level of transcendance is the highest level and is defined by its Oneness), the result being that giving into desires which they saw in a material way, humans lost the full extension of their soul and like the humans you know, only saw things to be material. The universe as seen as the Milky Way and such is simply the simplified perspective of humanity relative to that of God. The shortening of humankind's extension of the soul will be referred to as "detranscendance." Using the modern human perspective of time, the rebellion of humanity began earlier than the story of Demons which went differently. In the human society described by the story, God is pretty much seen as a material figure of myth and fairytale as humanity is primarily irreligious and not-spiritual. Humanity has devoted itself to secular humanism, moral relativity, and materialism in which human consciousness is considered the highest form of transcendance. Technological advancement allows astronauts to travel through a wormhole to the Demon's star system. As for the Demons, their story went rather differently. When Demons were first created, they coexisted with humankind in the Pre-World with a status much more like animals. When humanity underwent "detranscendance", God seperated Demons and other animals into what humanity sees as a different star system. Demons, unlike humanity, spent what human may define as a VERY long time evolving into more intelligent and analytical creatures and developing their own soul purely through the harnessing of spiritual energy in the conscience through knowledge, belief and eventually worship of God and the spiritual realm. Unlike humanity their animal-like origins made them very much tame to God's order, but also made them especially fragile to corruption as they continued to evolve. While Demons may see themselves differently (of course depending on the context of time in the fictional universe's meta-narrative), humankind's perspective made them typical, mysterious extra-terrestrials consistent with the material physics within their dimensional perspective at that time (of detranscendance). The Demons were so spiritually fragile and tame that when they met the human astronauts, they fell down to worship them in a form of icon worship the same way they had recognized God. Like the humans before transcendance, Demons possessed the ability to alter the nature of things in the way they believe they should be, the same way the soul is connected with the body and nature. The individual Demons each believed the astronauts to be all powerful gods with the same features of God, and were too illogical at the time to see their wrong. Because of this, the nature of the astronauts changed and they were "given" or "altered to gain" enough abilities to make them seem like gods, such as with the ability to possess one's body like a host to an avatar, enhanced wisdom allowing a more advanced sense of foresight, and the ability to harness spiritual energy in a physical way (magic is a good term for this. How it works is that one must wholeheartedly believe that he/she can do something, like make a stone float and such, and energy will be harnessed to achieve that objective belief. It is a simplified version of the miracle which only God can perform). These abilities of these false "gods" all eventually defined the Spirit Walker when the Demon society began to "modernize" (adopt humanistic, materialist ideas throughout societal advancement) and conflict between humans and Demons began to unfold. This can explain the "magical abilities" and host-avatar relationship present in some of the characters of the story defined as "Spirit Walkers," as well as the impact/nature of Nomad spirituality and culture from these gods which are meant to symbolize humanity's return to spirituality through the sacrifice of "intellect, knowledge, or sophistication". Guide to the Universe This is a guide to various aspects of this universe. And YES, there are (possible) spoilers. Nomads The term "Nomad" applies to any human who does not reside in a Sanctuary, but rather, lives outside the political boundaries of Sanctuaries. The majority of the Nomads are descended from surviving individuals who were banished from the Sanctuaries during the Purge. Minority Nomads consist of those banished for committing serious crimes. In order to help identify a Nomad in a crowd of Sanctuary citizens, a Nomad generically carries an active dominant gene known as the "Mark of Cain". The gene is the evolved offspring of a "genetic tattoo gene" used to physically brand bovine farm animals upon birth with a black birthmark of a special shape on a part of the body, in this case, the nape of a man or woman's neck. It is extremely rare for the gene to become inactive, but genetic tests can still identify Nomads even if the gene is physically inactive. This is the case for first generation Nomads. One of the characters is the only Nomad child born with the gene completely erased from his total genome (which allowed him to blend in to Sanctuary society). Nomad culture has been greatly influenced by folk myth and spirituality around the "gods", who generally used the Nomads as primary avatars following the Purge, hoping that they could develop a sense of communication with the humans. Nomads developed the term "Spirit Walker" for those who were potentially possessed by a "god". It was considered both a blessing and a curse to have a Spirit Walker among a Nomad pack since a Spirit Walker could sense Demons and have supernatural physical capabilities, but also the prescence of a Spirit Walker could cause Demons to become more aggressive. Nomads can be found anywhere since just about all Sanctuaries have banished during the Purge, and international event. Nomads live a lifestyle of constant travel because staying in one area for too long can subject Nomads to being hunted down by Demons. Nomads also have to face diseases, radical weather conditions, wild animals, particularly DGMO (Descendants of Genetically Engineered Organisms) animals, products of the history of various genetic engineering projects that have run wild after being abandoned by relocating human societies, etc. Nomads generally live in packs, similar to wolves, consisting of several families of Nomads as well as lone Nomads that work together to stay alive. Some Nomads are aggressive toward hostile packs, while others may seek trade and integration. To survive Nomads use varieties of tools and weapons, from the debris of ancient ruins, things stolen from both dead Demons and Sanctuary expedition militias, and handcrafted material. Also Nomads may (illegally) trade rare materials and wild products with black markets of newer, developing Sanctuaries, for access to Sanctuary-made materials. Purge Conspiracy While the Purge is often known as the period when the Sanctuary governments began to concentrate civilians and limit their reproductive activities based on genetic assets, which later escalated to rebellion. However, along with the proposed radical secular humanistic agenda of the Sanctuary governments, the seed of the Purge consisted of some surprising secrets. Prior to the Purge, the Military sectors of the Sanctuaries began to unite and improve their ranks and strategies. During this period, the United Nations established the "Term" system. In short words, the "Term" system involved sending simulation-trained soldiers on intermittent expeditions into No Man's Land for various combat missions. The system focused primarily on maximizing available troops on the field all the while allowing efficient reinforce, monitoring, and command of every company in action. With a more manageable military the government discovered several "prime subjects", soldiers who had greatly advanced physical capabilities. In reality these soldiers were among the early "Spirit Walkers". Because of the strong correlation between spirit power and faith, the "gods" had conveniently embodied individuals originating from the religious minorities within the Sanctuaries. From enhanced observation, researchers working for the government theorized that these individuals excelled because of improved genes; they were effectively "evolved" humans. The idea developed into a greater idea: the government wanted to breed genetically superior humans and raise them to fight Demons. To avoid direct complications with these "evolved" individuals, the United Nations decided to change society itself in order to create an environment where they could engage in their activities "legally". The United Nations expanded their control over the civilians, centralized the economy to rely on megacorporate powers, and began the Purge. Amidst the Purge, such "empowered" individuals were abducted and killed. The operation was a complete failure and there were huge consequences. To avoid future conflicts, millions were banished from the Sanctuaries, "genetically inferior" or not. Religious minorities, political prisoners, and "suspicious individuals" became Nomads. While the United Nations' Conformists tried to rebuild society in a social justification of their actions, secret experiments did not end. One of the characters is a cybernetic human on the run from a destiny he doesn't want, his story grown from the fact that he is believed, by government researchers, to be the only successful specimen in a cloned line of "genetically-enhanced organic cybernetic humans" part of an off-shoot project from the original operation taking place under the Purge. Sanctuary Structure All surveillance in Santuaries rely on the "Rubik's system", a huge computer network that allows the government to track civilians within different sectors of cities via bloodchips, first a small tracker surgically inserted into the wrist of civilians as they reach the age of 3, later upgraded to an identification data-chip at the citizenship age of 17. This means once a criminal is identified he or she can be easily tracked through the system. Sanctuary cities are caved deep into the ground in order to maximize living space for a large population. Sanctuary Underworlds However, the Rubik's computer system relies on solar power, so the Underworld zones of Sanctuaries (the deeper levels where the sun does not shine over) fails to fall under the system's surveillance. Because of these issues, the Underworld is greatly policed by Sanctuary Security, but that is not enough to prevent the Underworld from becoming infested with crime. The Underworld is also the breeding ground of rebellion, where the more radical Reformists have resided and spread their agenda. Because of this issue, Sanctuaries are often divided between the "Sunshine City" and the "Heckhole" (these are both slang terms for the areas covered by the Rubik's system and the areas that aren't). Higher and Middle Class living and working in the Sunshine City will often completely avoid the Underworld, and to avoid the Rubik's surveillance, thuggish civilians often of Lower Class populations may steer clear of the Sunshine City. Those who live, work, or originate from the Underworlds are referred to as the slang term "Heckie(s)". Edge Districts The Edge Districts are urban areas that stray at the edge of Sanctuary Walls, often hugging these Walls. Edge Districts tend to be a blend between wealthy and poor depending on the location. Edge Districts may find themselves in the shipping sectors where cargo from other Sanctuaries are dropped off. These are also tourism hot spots. These Edge Districts are where more privatized businesses from the countryside can thrive outside the competition of megacorporate entities. On the other hand Edge Districts also embody various factories and nuclear power plants that power all of the Sanctuary and create all necessities sold through megacoporations. The labor force primarily resides in the Edge Districts. Those who live, work, or originate from the Edge Districts are referred to as the slang term "Edger(s)". Sanctuary Inner Countryside Between the central urban zones and the Outer Districts is the large expanse of countryside where agriculture and waterculture resides. In the countryside living style is often more traditional, although technological advances and genetic modification does help create large sums of top quality food every year. This allows Sanctuary food to be relatively cheap and healthy at the same time, however mutation-related damage due to faulty genetic modification can lead to food shortages relevant to a particular type of produce. High speed rail allows lightning fast travel for both people and produce throughout Sanctuaries. Those who live, work, or originate from the Inner Countryside are referred to as the slang term "Innie(s)". Sunshine Cities Sunshine City is the slang term used for urban areas surveyed by the Rubik's system. This is where megacorporations host their main buildings, an urban skeleton with the muscle made up by a variety of urban structures. This is also where government heart sectors are founded. Millions of people work here, often as some sort of business worker or political worker. If you seen Coruscant surface from Star Wars or some other scifi-ey super-city, that's what the Sunshine Cities look like. Those who live, work, or originate from the Sunshine Cities are referred to as the slang term "Shinie(s)". Conformists Conformists are both supporters and/or registrated members of the Human Sovereignty Party (HSP), a major political party of the United Nations. The first Conformists are primarily known to be the instigators of the Purge. Conformists generically believe that humanity as a whole can strongly redominate Earth if each Sanctuary government has large amounts of power and control over society, agrees with the majority, enforces high taxation, full social cooperation, and mass produces necessities. When most of the characters meet in the exposition point of the story, in the eye of the public political Conformists have deradicalized from their original agenda since the end of the Purge. Conformists are also Social Darwinists who believe those incapable of benefitting society more than the benefits they recieve for their own living should not continue to be part of society (these diminished people are referred to as Social Defects) as they will only plague it if their influence continues to reside and grow within the human population; however rather than purge Social Defects like back in the Purge-era, contemporary Conformists often discriminate against them by denying them rights and priveleges. Most anti-Conformist criticism goes to their disrespect of traditional human rights and their radical and controversial definition of true human sovereignty. Reformists Reformists are both supporters and/or registrated members of the Progressive Reform Party which was formed after the Purge-era as a civil right's movement response to the events of the Purge. Reformists rarely contain single opinions about things which, historically, made the party rather unstable, but in general most contemporary Reformists, especially those in power, support capitalism and corporate consumerism as a means of efficient provision for the mass Sanctuary populaces. Over decades disagreements within the party made a vast majority of registered Reformists leave the party. Contemporary Reformists in power are known to be corrupt and only kept in power by the corporate conglomerates that dominate most Sanctuaries. Reformists, unlike Conformists, see no need to remove "Social Defects" from society because those who care for them and provide them with supplies and services purchased from the corporation-controlled market, and those that are not cared for have no major negative impact on society whatsoever. The most anti-Reformist criticism goes to their inability to take quick and effective action and/or agree on a solution against sudden issues that arise on human society, and their futile impact on humanity's objective of retaking Earth which was one of the primary requests of the UN Sanctuary Articles. The Characters The first main character starts off as a Nomad-born baby travelling with Nomads. Unlike ALL other Nomads, an extremely dominant artificial gene that every Nomad had developed during the Purge & Banishment known as the 'Mark of Cain' (A black birthmark in the shape of an M appearing on the nape of the neck during an embryo's outer skin development), had disappeared in the baby's genome due to a rare mutation. While the Nomads camp on an ancient highway, they are attacked by a type of the Demon known as the Diablo (there are many species of the Demon family), and the baby is the soul survivor after being hid by other Nomads in an ancient automobile where a god manifests itself into the baby to make it stop crying. Meanwhile, a group of Sanctuary soldiers (I'll explain the military system later) from the Sanctuary of Eden arrive following Diablo tracks. The soldiers are spending their final patrol before returning home after three months. A corporal named Aaron Brodetsky finds the baby and hides it while on the way back, and gets the baby smuggled in through several acquaintances.